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A SERMON 




PREACHED IN KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON, 




SUNDAY, MAY 12, 1861. 




B Y 




JAMES WALKER, D. D. 




PRINTED AT THE REQUEST <>l- THE WARDENS OF THE SOCIETY. 


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BOST N : 




PRESS OF GEO. C. RAND & AVERY, 




NO. 3 CORNHILL. 




18 6 1. 



Slje Spirit proper to tl)e <£imes. 



A SERMON 



PEEACHED IN KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON, 



SUNDAY, MAY 13, 1861 



JAMES WALKER, D.D 
it 



PRINTED AT THE BEQUEST OF THE WARDENS OF THE SOCIETY. 



BOSTON: 

PRESS OF GEO. C. RAND & AVERY 

NO. 3 CORNHILL. 
18 6 1. 



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' M -XCHAMG1 
Mar 



SERMON 



" With such sacrifices God is well pleased." —Hebrews xiii. 16. 

I am to speak of public spirit, as manifested in a 
willingness to make sacrifices for the public good. 

The necessity for making sacrifices would seem to be 
founded in this : as we cannot have every thing, we must 
be willing to sacrifice some things in order to obtain or 
secure others. Wicked men recognize and act upon this 
principle. Can you not recall more than one person in 
your own circle of acquaintances who is sacrificing his 
health, his good name, his domestic comfort, to vicious 
indulgences? Worldly people recognize and act upon 
this principle. Look at that miser : he is hoarding up his 
thousands and his tens of thousands, but in order to do so, 
is he not sacrificing every thing which makes life worth 
having? It is a mistake to suppose that religion, or 
morality, or the public necessities, ever call upon us to 
make greater sacrifices than those which men are con- 
tinually making to sin and the world, to fashion and fame, . 
to " the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride 
of life." 

In times of ease, and abundance, and tranquillity, the 
public takes care of itself. There are few sacrifices on 
the part of individuals for the public good, because there 
are few occasions for such sacrifices. They are not made 
because not called for, because not needed. Moreover, 
private benevolence is apt at such times to become less 



active, and, for the same reason, that is to say, because 
less of it is required. 

This state of things is seized upon by those who are 
eager to put the worst possible construction on human 
nature and human conduct, as evidence of extreme de- 
generacy. How often are we to be told that our present 
troubles are sent upon us in order to lift the whole com- 
munity out of the mire of money-getting propensities, 
where every thing like public spirit was in danger of being 
swallowed up and lost ? I protest against this wholesale 
abuse of what has been, — at best, a gross exaggeration. 
The whole truth in this matter is told in a few words. 
By constitution, by habit, by circumstances, our people 
are intensely active ; and this activity, for want of other 
objects, has been turned into the channels of material 
prosperity. " If, therefore, you merely affirm their excessive 
eagerness in acquisition, I grant it ; but if, not content 
with this, you go on to charge them with being niggards 
in expending what they have acquired, I deny it, emphati- 
cally, utterly. Read the history of what has been done 
in this commonwealth, in this city, during the last twenty- 
five years for humanity, for education, for science and the 
arts, for every form of public use or human need, and then 
say, if you can, that public spirit has been dying out. 
Our people have never been otherwise than public spirited, 
and hence the promptness and unanimity of their response 
to this new call to public duty. Hence also our confidence 
in it, — not as an excitement merely, which a day has 
made, and a day may unmake, but as an expression of 
character. 

Let us, however, be just to the excitement itself, con- 
sidered as the sudden and spontaneous uprising of a whole 
community to sustain the government. We need demon- 



strations of this kind, from time to time, to reassure us 
that all men have souls. It is worth a great deal merely 
as an experiment, on a large scale, to prove that the moral 
and social instincts are as much a part of human nature 
as the selfish instincts. But he must be a superficial 
observer who can see nothing in this vast movement but 
the play of instincts. It is a great moral force. 

"Not a little of what passes for loyalty or patriotism in 
other countries is blind impulse, growing out of mere 
attachment to the soil, or the power of custom, or a help- 
less feeling of dependence on things as they are. " If my 
father in his grave could hear of this war," said a Spanish 
peasant, " his bones would not rest." Yet what earthly 
interest, what intelligible concern had Spanish peasants in 
the rivalships and struggles of princes who thought of 
nothing but their own or their family aggrandizement. 
Of such loyalty, of such patriotism, there never has been 
much in this country, and there never will be. The loyal 
and patriotic States have risen up as one man to main- 
tain the government, because the government represents 
the great ideas of order and liberty. It is not an excite- 
ment of irritation merely, or of wounded vanity, or of a 
selfish and discomfited ambition. It is, as I have said, a 
great moral force, a reverence for order and liberty ; an 
excitement, if you will have it so, but an excitement rest- 
ing on solid and intelligible principle, and one, therefore, 
which trial and sacrifice will be likely to convert into 
earnest and solemn purpose. 

I suppose some are full of concern as to the effect which 
trial and sacrifice will really have on this new outbreak of 
public spirit. They fear that suffering for our principles 
will abate our confidence in them, or at least our interest 
in them, and so the ardor will die away. So doubtless, 
1* 



it will in some cases, for every community has its repre- 
sentatives of " the seed that was sown on stony ground ; 
but it will be the exception and not the rule. Human 
nature, if it has fair play, will never lead a single indi- 
vidual to think less of a privilege or blessing, merely 
because it has cost more. When has religion interested 
men the most, and the most generally? Precisely at 
those times when men were religious at the greatest 
sacrifices. Indeed, it is on this principle that we explain 
the decay of a proper love of country among us for the 
last twenty or thirty years ; it is because we have had so 
little to do for our country. A foreign war, even a 
famine or a pestilence, if it had been sufficiently severe, 
would have saved us from our present trouble and humilia- 
tion. So long as the people think and feel together, they 
hold each other up, and the sacrifices in which they 
express their public spirit, instead of wearing it out, will 
purify it and keep it alive. 

And this is not all. From the language sometimes used 
in speaking of sacrifices for the public good, it might almost 
be supposed that the making of them is simply painful, 
simply distressing. But is it so ? Of course both instinct 
and duty impel us to look out for ourselves ; but is it not 
equally true that both instinct and duty impel us to help 
one another, and provide for the common weal ? A 
generous and noble deed, — simply painful, simply dis- 
tressing ! I will not deny that a long life of selfishness, 
meanness, and servility may bring here and there one to 
look on things in this light, but not until he is, in the 
language of Scripture, "without natural affection." 
" Public spirit," so an eminent jurist has defined it, "is the 
whole body of those affections which unite men's hearts to 
the commonwealth." What I insist upon is, that these 



are real and natural affections, and that, in acting them out, 
we find a real and natural satisfaction. Who will say- 
that the happiest moments of his existence have not been 
those in which he was conscious of living for others, and 
not for himself? There are many things in the present 
aspect of our public affairs to fill us with regret and 
anxiety, but a gleam of light shines through the cloud. 
Every man and woman and child will be moved to act 
more unselfishly, more nobly ; life will cost more, but it 
will also be worth more. 

It is extremely difficult to do justice to this human 
nature of ours, — capable at once of such mean and little 
things, of such noble and great things. There is, however, 
one distinction which all, I suppose, will accord to it : I 
mean its tendency to rise up and meet great emergencies. 
In every soul that lives there is an untold amount of 
latent energy and public spirit which only waits for the 
occasion to call it forth. Read the history of the Nether- 
lands, — a people made up, for the most part, of mer- 
chants and manufacturers, of traders and artisans, grow- 
ing rich and apparently thinking of little else. A blow is 
struck at the free institutions which they had inherited 
from their ancestors; immediately a new spirit reveals 
itself, and all Europe rings with the story of their heroic 
daring and suffering. 

The sacrifices which the country asks for in time of 
war are those of property, labor, and life ; and she does 
not ask in vain. 

We are continually reminded that this rebellion has 
taken place at a moment of great national prosperity, 
to blast it all. The sacrifices of property, in a thousand 
ways, must be immense ; every man, however, from 
his diminished fortune, is "ready to distribute," and 



8 



" not grudgingly or of necessity." His public spirit makes 
him love to give. I doubt whether it is common for 
rich men to think any better of themselves merely 
because they are rich ; but if they can make their riches, 
and their financial skill, available to save the State, they 
will think better of themselves, and they will have a 
right to do so. There is a natural jealousy of wealth, 
especially when it takes the form of a passion for accu- 
mulation, which demagogues and fanatics know how to 
use for bad ends. One of the incidental benefits result- 
ing from a great national struggle is, that all these social 
misunderstandings and heart-burnings are suspended, are 
healed. The people see and feel and acknowledge that 
a real title to nobility is found, not in wealth itself, but 
in wealth generously and nobly bestowed. 

Others are manifesting their public spirit by sacrifices of 
time and labor. And here I wish I could find fit terms in 
which to acknowledge the services and sufferings of 
women. You have heard of the Spartan mother equip- 
ping her son for battle, and giving him, last of all, the 
shield, with the brief and stern farewell, "With it or 
on it." We expect no such stoicism now, but we expect 
what is better. We expect that Christian mothers, with 
hearts bleeding for their country, and bleeding for their 
children, will say, " It is the will of God that they should 
go," and, furthermore, that they will go, having always 
been taught at home that there are many things worse than 
death. And then how many fingers are busily at work 
in all classes, rich and poor alike, to provide for the com- 
fort of those who go ? They even ask for the privilege 
of tending the sick and wounded. How many, brought 
up in ease and affluence, would follow in the steps of her 
whose tender voice, the very rustle of whose dress by the 



bedside of the dying soldier was as a glimpse of heaven. 
I have heard men call this "romance." But is it well, or 
right, or tolerable, in times like these, to look round for 
side motives, when the motive avowed is reasonable and 
probable ? I believe, as I believe I live, that many who 
never knew what it is to work before, are ready to thank 
God for the chance they now have to live to some purpose. 
But will our men fight f There is no denying that 
this word sounds disagreeably in a Christian discourse ; 
still, I have no misgivings in respect to it, — no extrava- 
gances to take back ; not the beginning of a doubt but 
that there are wars which, on one side at least, are neces- 
sary, and just, and holy. The Bible contains no express 
and unqualified prohibition of war; neither can such pro- 
hibition be said to be intimated or implied in any text or 
in the general tenor of Scripture, without making it sub- 
versive, at the same time, of civil government. Besides, I 
remember that the first person not a Jew, in whose favor 
our Lord wrought a miracle, was a Roman centurion; 
and that the first person not a Jew admitted into the 
Christian church, was also a Roman centurion ; and not 
a syllable is said against their calling, neither is there a 
shadow of evidence that they ever changed, it. Undoubt- 
edly it is the legitimate and certain tendency of the spirit 
of the gospel, as it is more and more diffused in the 
world, to introduce universal peace ; but the spirit of the 
gospel acts from within outwardly, and not from without 
inwardly. Thus the stop to be put to war is to be ex- 
pected, not so much by chaining down those irrepressible 
instincts which lead men to resist wrong, as by eradicating 
the disposition to do wrong. Wars will cease when all 
men are Christians, and perfect Christians ; but this will 
not be to-day nor to-morrow. 



10 



Accordingly, I am not surprised that the call to arms 
has been responded to with such enthusiasm, — or that it 
is sustained by the whole moral and religious sentiment 
of the community. Men are ready to offer up not only 
their money and their labor, but also their lives. Are you 
afraid that your sons and brothers will be cowards merely 
because they are not duelists? because they have never been 
engaged in a street-fight ? because prayers were made at 
their departure ? or because they have carried their bibles 
with them? Did Cromwell's soldiers flee before the 
cavaliers because they were sober and God-fearing 
men ? Our people have no love for fighting, as a pastime ; 
let it, however, become a serious business, and they will 
show that their veins are full of the blood that flowed so 
freely in other days. 

These are some of the ways in which a people may 
manifest their public spirit, and in which our people are 
manifesting it now. " With such sacrifices God is well 
pleased." I have given a definition of public spirit from 
the jurists, but I like still better the Bible definition. In 
the words of the prophet, " They helped every one his 
neighbor, and every one said to his brother, Be of good 
courage." 

In looking back on what has been said, I find I have 
not spoken against anybody, not even against our enemies. 
Perhaps we have had enough of invective ; at any rate 
the pulpit may spare it. God is my witness, I feel no 
vindictive resentment, no bitter hostility against those 
who have been swept away by this terrible delusion. 
Moreover, I confess to being greatly moved by the circum- 
stance that in some respects what is true of us is true 
also of them. They seem to be of one mind ; their 
religious men appeal with confidence to the righteous 



11 



Judge ; their women are working day and night to help 
forward the cause. If it were a mere question of interest, 
or passion, or prejudice between us and them, it might be 
said that one side is as likely to be self-deceived as the 
other. But it is not. By striking at the principles of all 
constitutional and free government, and this too avowedly 
for the purpose of founding society on the servitude of an 
inferior race, on whose toil the more favored races are to 
live, they have put themselves in opposition to the settled 
convictions and the moral sense of good men all over the 
world. 

To the student of history it is no new thing that a 
whole community should be given over " to believe a lie," 
— not the less mad, because all mad together. The pro- 
cess by which this state of things is brought about is 
always substantially the same. Egotism, vanity, disap- 
pointed ambition, sectional jealousies, a real or supposed 
interest or expediency induce them to wish that a wrong 
course were the right one. They try to convince them- 
selves that it is so, and all such efforts to sophisticate the 
conscience, if persisted in, are punished by entire success. 
The spectacle does not inspire me with hate ; it fills me 
with wonder and profound melancholy. Do these men 
think that by altering their opinion of right they can alter 
the nature of things, or make wrong come out right in 
the great and solemn issues which are before us ? TVe 
stand where their own great men stood in the best days 
of the republic. As regards the leading rights and 
interests at stake, our consciences are but the echo of the 
conscience of the Christian world. The fathers of the 
Revolution, one and all, are looking down with sorrow 
and indignation on this attempt to break up and destroy 
their work. 



12 



Nevertheless, it can do no good to begin by overvalu- 
ing ourselves, or undervaluing our enemies. We know 
that the behests of a righteous Providence will be accom- 
plished, but we do not know in what way. It is more 
than probable that in the troubles and distractions which 
have come upon the country we ourselves have something 
to answer for. For this reason reverses and humiliations 
may be in store for us, before we are accounted worthy to 
carry out the Divine judgments. But there can be no 
doubt as to the end. A struggle has been forced upon us 
by a doomed people, if the laws of nature do not fail, if 
there is any meaning in the moral sentiments of mankind, 
or any justice in heaven. 



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